


the moving process

by DuendeJunior



Series: the domesticity blues [1]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Anxiety Attacks, Domestic Fluff, Fluff, Future Fic, Light Angst, M/M, communication problems
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-16
Updated: 2017-02-16
Packaged: 2018-09-24 22:44:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,368
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9790406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DuendeJunior/pseuds/DuendeJunior
Summary: It all comes down to this - whether or not he should have a space in Victor's life.





	

**Author's Note:**

> guess who's back etc
> 
> for this one I went with the assumption that Yuuri moved to St. Petersburg after Japanese Nationals bc I wanted to mention that this boy at least slept a little after hauling his sweet little ass to Russia  
> and a heads-up for a brief description of Yuuri's anxiety symptoms on the fifth section. and Yuuri's anxiety in general
> 
> big thanks to my lil' sis Mary (MaryMorstan @ ao3 /myencyclopediaofweirdness @ tumblr) for helping me with the structure and cheering me up

Yuuri’s first thought when he enters Victor’s closet for the first time is something along the lines of _it didn’t look so cluttered in those Instagram promo pictures_.

Not that it’s a tiny cupboard, far from it. Yuuri has the feeling he could fit his old room in here. The shelves are dark brown and well illuminated, and there’s a couch in case someone needs a place to sit and choose their outfit - or, in Yuuri’s jetlagged case, a place to drop dead for a few hours. He’s only resisting the temptation - the couch looks so _soft_ \- to spare himself the shame of being found asleep less than fifteen feet from the bed.

The thing is... Between Victor’s immaculate suits, Victor’s shoe collection, Victor’s regular clothes, the drawers filled with Victor’s socks and underwear, the boxes containing Victor’s old costumes (recently shipped back from Japan) and many other boxes containing parts of Victor’s life not even the most dedicated fan magazines reported (he can see what seems to be a chipped harmonica peeking out of one, for starters), Yuuri’s sure there’s simply no space for his standard suitcase, or his faded sports bags packed with even more clothes.

Every nook and cranny filled; no Yuuri need apply.

“Yuuri!”, Victor says behind him. “You haven’t come to test the mattress yet.” Yuuri doesn’t need to turn around to know he’s pouting.

“Sorry! I was just wondering where I should leave these”, he says, lifting a bag.

The plush carpet muffles Victor’s steps, which is why Yuuri almost jumps when he feels someone taking the weight out of his hands. He knows this, but it’s hard to stop his mind from going _stop being ridiculous, it’s just Victor_ at himself.

Yuuri watches, a bit bewildered, as Victor unceremoniously moves expensive jackets from one end of the closet to another to clear enough space for his things.

“For now I think we can leave this here”, he says, pointing at the shelf where he just stacked the bags on top of one another, and the shelf where the suitcase rested vertically. “And next weekend we’ll clear some drawers together and you can start unpacking.”

Yuuri just nods. His brain feels like an old computer trying to run the newest Final Fantasy installment - all processes are lagging.

He’ll try to think of this after catching up on sleep.

**-**

The next day, Yuuri unwraps a new toothbrush and, after rinsing his mouth, places it beside Victor’s brush inside the cabinet.

It shouldn’t feel like such an enormous step. It does.

He figures it’s enough for a day.

**-**

Training starts not long after that. Yuuri’s coming from a gold at the Japanese Nationals, and no one wants him to lose momentum - neither Victor, nor Yakov, and least of all himself. He knows he won by the skin of his teeth thanks to the Victor-shaped void at his side during the competition - there’s only so much Facetime can do -, but it pushes him to work even harder for the Four Continents.

He keeps his suitcase ready - the European Championships are fast arriving, and Yuuri won’t be left behind to watch Victor through the TV at the mess hall.

He keeps the other bags ready too - for reasons much harder to articulate.

**-**

Victor is a very elegant trailblazer running over the other competitors at the Euro. At the banquet, Chris jokes that no one being able to win against a Victor Nikiforov who hasn’t entered the ice competitively in almost a year either says terrible things about them or wonderful things about him. From his place at the side of the rink - and then at the kiss and cry -, Yuuri’s sure it’s the latter.

Yurio’s evolution is nothing to sneeze at, either. The competition this year is going to be _tough_ , and Yuuri can’t wait for it.

Back in St. Petersburg a couple of days later, Victor insists on a celebratory dance, and Yuuri ends up fishing his CD collection from the depth of a cardboard box after they exhaust Victor’s vinyl one. It goes on the TV stand after that, replacing an empty DVD storage box.

His eyes are burning with exhaustion and Victor is fast asleep by his side on the couch by the time Yuuri makes himself stop staring at it.

**-**

They keep training. They keep walking home together at night, and Yuuri keeps taking Makkachin for her walk whenever Victor doesn’t find time to. Victor keeps taking him to restaurants, to the park, to museums, to visit his old music teacher, who helped him not to die of boredom and other unpleasant side effects when he was nineteen and out of the spotlights thanks to an injured knee.

They keep living. And Yuuri keeps postponing the actual unpacking.

In one of the mornings Victor isn’t home with them, Yuuri piles all his boxes on a corner of the living room. If Victor asks, he’ll say it was because they were a hazard, all scattered around the room. What if someone tripped?

He imagines Victor asking then if it was so dangerous to leave the boxes around, why didn’t he unpack already? He imagines Victor sorting out what to discard to make way for Yuuri’s things. He imagines Victor sending his old costumes to some deposit. Victor giving up what he treasured so Yuuri could insinuate himself in his space.

 _It’s going to be difficult to replace everything, you know. When he inevitably realizes how much of a hindrance you are_ , his mind not-so-helpfully supplies.

He has to sit on the floor to compose himself, then. He holds Makkachin tight against his chest when she appears to see why her new human is taking so long to take her to the park.

Yuuri doesn’t cry then, but it’s close. It’s mostly sweat and the odd bout of nausea. He breathes through his nose, long and deep, and avoids thinking he should take another bath. He has to meet Victor at the rink after walking Makkachin, but he’s been cycling through the same two loads of laundry as not to make a bigger mess of the sports bags in the closet. He can’t remember if he has more clean shirts available.

Makkachin licks his face and escapes his hold, and he gives her a weak laugh. He gets up, and walks to the bedroom.

It takes a while, but he manages to wash his face - not sparing a single thought to the toothbrushes inside the cabinet, so close together - and find another shirt before leaving the apartment with Makkachin in tow. He hopes she doesn’t mind having a shorter walk today - they have half an hour before he needs to be at the rink.

He hopes Victor doesn’t notice anything.

**-**

“Yuuri”, Victor calls. They’re sprawled on the living room couch, and he has his face smushed against Yuuri’s bare stomach. Earlier in the day, Yuuri pondered again if it was wise to do a dash for the closet and recover a clean shirt and his old yoga pants, but then Victor caught him walking out of shower wearing only boxers and a loose red crop top (an impulsive purchase that Mari never wore) and that was that.

Yuuri answers with a distracted “huh?”, eyes glued to the 3DS screen. On a patch of sunlight on the floor, Makkachin dreams peacefully.

Victor moves, and Yuuri feels his chin dig into the soft flesh of his belly - he’s probably trying to make him look down. “We haven’t opened your boxes yet”, he says. “Or put any of your clothes in our drawers.”

Aw crap.

The urge to fidget is strong, but the unwillingness to unsettle Victor - whose warm weight pins him on the couch - is stronger. Yuuri settles for raising his console a little, keeping it as a barrier between him and Victor’s gaze.

“Uhm…”. Yuuri bites his lip. “We haven’t gotten many free moments since I moved here.” His back is starting to sweat. “Between you going to the European Championships, me training for Four Continents, planning for Worlds… Not a lot of time to unpack. It seemed easier to leave the bags as they were.“ It sounds like a decent enough answer. Even to himself.

Victor makes a noise that might be of agreement - it’s a bit hard to tell without looking at his face. “I see”, he says. He turns his head again, now pressing its side to Yuuri’s stomach. “I shouldn’t let my imagination run wild.”

“... How so, Victor?”, Yuuri asks. Victor’s tone betrayed nothing.

He feels, more than hears, Victor’s sigh.

“I mean”, Victor starts. “I saw your bags all zipped up and bursting inside the closet and thought ‘he’s going to bolt back to Japan at any moment, isn’t he. I whisked him off to my land of eternal cold like a madman, and he can’t wait to leave’.” He ends his sentence with a sardonic laugh.

Yuuri gulps hard, feels his stomach dropping. His 3DS is still between them. He has no idea what he was about to do on the game anymore.

The past year had brought him excellent opportunities to work on his anxiety issues, but the tendency to get stuck in his own head and not notice what his decisions looked like from an outside perspective persisted. And the wake-up calls never got easier to handle. Minako talking his ear off after his press conference, where he revealed he hadn’t felt his family’s love - and, by extension, her love - as a tangible thing had been one of those. Victor crying in their hotel room before the Free Skate had been another. And now…

“ _No, no, no_!”, he says in feeble Russian. Stretching his arm, he places the 3DS over the coffee table. It doesn’t strike him as fair having this conversation without at least trying to face Victor. He can’t make himself believe Victor would readily accept if he explained the things his mental weakness whisper to him each and any time he so much glances at those blasted boxes and sports bags, but he figures he should at least offer some eye contact. “Don’t think that! We were pretty busy, that’s all! And... I didn’t want to bother you with that during our breaks...“

Victor glares at him, eyes narrowed.

“I wouldn’t ask you to live here if it was a bother”, he says. Then, with another sigh, he lets his face fall back on Yuuri’s stomach and mumbles something in Russian against his skin.

Yuuri lets his head fall backwards and stares at the ceiling. His fingers itch to touch Victor’s hair, but it wouldn’t be wise to initiate touch if Victor is upset. That much at least he understands.

After a minute, he feels Victor entwining their fingers.

“Yuuri”, he calls again, tugging on Yuuri’s hand before looking up again. “What if we started with your books? It’s just one box, if I’m remembering correctly.”

Yuuri blinks. Indeed, he brought a single box of books with him - mostly the same ones he’d taken to Detroit a couple of years ago, and some old favorites he rediscovered while cleaning his childhood room one last time.

He glances at Victor’s boxy bookshelves, and knows Victor is following his movements.

“Yes, _solnyshko_ , I have space for them”, he says. His eyes are painfully sweet when Yuuri looks back at him. “I have space enough.”

Meeting Yuuri where he is, once more. Even if Yuuri can’t tell him everything, not now.

Yuuri gives in and cradles Victor’s face with his free hand, running a thumb along a fine cheekbone and watching him close his eyes and lean into the touch. He doesn’t trust himself to answer in words without devolving into a blubbery mess.

“We could start after lunch, maybe get Makkachin to help too”, Victor says, a small smile blooming in his lips. “What do you think?”

Yuuri runs his fingers through Victor’s hair, and answers with a smile of his own.

“Yeah”, he says. “Yeah, I think we could.”

**-**

A few months down the road, it’ll ( _finally_ ) occur to Yuuri that both of them have been tailoring their actions according to the same belief: that the other might leave at the drop of a hat.

He’ll be alone at their apartment - Victor having left with Makkachin for a walk half an hour ago, slamming the door behind them -, staring into the depths of his bowl of borscht. He’ll bury his head in his hands with a long groan, and the frame of his glasses will dig uncomfortably into his face.

He’ll spend agonizing minutes wondering why they keep having domestic spats about the closet, or whether or not Yuuri has opinions on furniture until the clarifying thought hits him like a train.

Later that day, Victor will find Yuuri’s note stuck to the fridge - a sheet of dog-themed stationery paper they got from the triplets where Yuuri explains, in English and with careful penmanship, how much he _doesn’t want to leave_ and how terrified he is of the day Victor decides he’ll be better without him. And that Victor might find him at the rink - both of them have a key, for emergencies - if he still wants to talk.

Victor will be the perfect example of the reckless Russian driver, breaking several traffic laws and defying one or two scientific laws in order to get to the rink as fast as possible. He’ll find Yuuri skating figure eights, like he always does when his mind is too full and the rink is empty.

He won’t stop for a single second before tying his own skates and meeting Yuuri at the center of the rink, all the while chanting “why would I ever want you to leave?” like a broken record. Yuuri’s shirt will get all wet with tears. And so will Victor’s.

“I think I’ve been telling you to stay even before we met”, Victor will tell him after a long stretch of silence, his face buried in Yuuri’s hair, the two of them standing in the middle of the rink. “As potentially creepy as it sounds.”

A watery chucke will leave Yuuri’s lips. He’ll tighten his arms around Victor’s waist.

“Maybe you were, Vitya.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm also on [tumblr](http://everymanwillbeaking.tumblr.com)


End file.
